a sweet epistle passed between
us--epistles fu' o' lowin love, an' sparklin hopes, an' joy. I may as
weel here remark, too, that, on the occasions o' my visits to Lucy, I
was maist cordially an' kindly received by her mother--a fine, decent,
motherly body, an' a widow--Lucy's father havin died several years
before. Aweel, as I said, our correspondence went on closely an'
uninterruptedly; but I maun noo add, wi' a restriction as to time, an'
say for aboot five months, at the end o' which time it suddenly ceased,
on the pairt o' Lucy, a'thegither. She was due me a letter at the time;
for I had written three close on the back o' each other, which were yet
unanswered. In the greatest impatience an' uneasiness, I first waited ae
week, an' then anither, an' anither, an' anither, till they ran up to
aboot six, whan, unable langer to thole the misery which her seemin
negligence, or it micht be something waur, had created, I determined on
puttin my fit in the coach, an' gaun slap richt through mysel, to
ascertain the cause o' her extraordinary silence. To this
proceedin--that is, my gaun to Glasgow--I was further induced by anither
circumstance. There was a mercantile hoose there, wi' which my faither
had dealt for twenty years, an' which had gotten, frae first to last,
mony a thoosan pounds o' his money--a' weel an' punctually paid. Noo, it
happened that, twa or three days before this, my faither had dispatched
an order to this house for a fresh supply o' guids, whan, to oor
inexpressible amazement, we received, instead o' the guids, a letter
plumply refusin ony further credit, an' demandin, under a threat o'
immediate prosecution, payment o' oor current account--amountin to aboot
L150. To us this was a most extraordinary affair, an' wholly
inexplicable, an' we resolved to know what it meant, by personal
application to the firm. This, then, was anither purpose I had to serve
in gaun to Glasgow, to which I accordingly set out, wi' the folks
hunner-an'-fifty pounds in my pocket.

On arrivin in the city just named, my first ca', of course, was on Lucy.
But this wasna accomplished withoot a great deal o' previous painfu
feelin. It was twa or three minutes before I could rap. At length I
raised the knocker, an' struck. Lucy opened the door. She stared wildly
at me, for a second, an' then, utterin a scream, ran into the house,
exclaimin, distractedly--"O James, James! mother, mother! here's Mr.
Smith's ghost!" And she screamed again